Students’ Awareness of Filipino Culture: Basis for Designing a Contextualized Module in Teaching Understanding Culture among SHS Students

Abstract

Certain social values, beliefs, religions, and customs vary among different cultures to which people are linked. A sense of unity and belongingness within a certain group of culture is what called cultural heritage. Tracing and studying cultural heritage provide us with a better understanding of a certain culture and helps us understand and respect each other’s  culture. Using a mixed-method design, this study explored the 300 senior high school (SHS) students’ awareness of Filipino culture as a basis for designing a module which will be useful in teaching. Quantitative and qualitative data were used to reveal the SHS students’ awareness levels and perceptions of Filipino culture and heritage using a survey questionnaire and an interview. A total of 50 of these SHS students were also interviewed by applying the principle of saturation. Findings revealed that the students’ awareness levels of traditional dresses, dances, and food are low. Results from interviews and root cause analysis reveal the low awareness levels of students of their own culture which are contributed to by the following: (a) vanishing of cultural heritage; (b) meagre preservation and integration of Filipino culture in teaching; and (c) Filipino cultural heritage dilemma. Furthermore, the relationships between participants’ profiles and levels of awareness showed that gender and tribe are significantly correlated to their level of awareness of the Filipino cultural heritage. Thus, the result shows an evident support for designing a module in teaching an Understanding Culture Society and Politics (UCSP) core subject as there is a need to integrate culture awareness in all other subjects.